Racial Preferences as Slavery Reparation

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear the most important civil rights case in a quarter of a century. White students denied entry to the University of Michigan undergraduate and law schools have alleged they are victims of reverse racial discrimination because of the schools' affirmative action programs. The basic legal issue is this: Can race be used as a factor in admissions, in light of the history of racial discrimination, to promote a more diverse student body?

However, the Michigan cases also raise a broader moral and philosophical question: When and for how long should future generations pay for the sins of previous generations? How far do we extend collective responsibility for violations of human rights? When does the relationship between an evil done by an earlier generation and the responsibility of a later generation terminate?

Between 1619 and 1865, about 8 million Africans and their descendants were enslaved in the United States. The slaves have of course died, but grandchildren or other direct relatives survive.

A series of class-action lawsuits have been brought in federal courts on behalf of the nation's 35 million African Americans against 15 American companies that allegedly profited from unpaid slave labor or secured wrongful profits by trading in and enslaving people forcibly brought over from Africa.

The plaintiffs seek reparations for African Americans through an accounting of the profits derived from the slave trade and the use of unpaid slave labor; the disgorgement of illicit profits from the use of slave labor in railroad construction and in the cultivation of cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar; the restitution of benefits derived by the use of slave labor; and punitive damages for the gross violation of human rights. The plaintiffs estimate that from 1790 to 1860, the U.S. economy reaped the benefits of $40 million in unpaid labor, what they estimate to be $1.4 trillion in today's dollars.

The lawsuits refer as a precedent to the reparations paid to Holocaust victims. Both involved the use of coerced labor. American slaves had no assets to plunder, as did many Holocaust victims, but both suffered destruction of their families and the theft of their culture.